Please Help! XP Installation Problems!

[Deversol]

I have spent several days trying to get XP installed on my system, to no avail.

I have an Asus A7v133 mobo with a 1.3GHz Athlon, and am installing XP on a WD SE 80gb hard drive formatted in NTFS. I also have 768MB of Crucial PC133 CL2 SDRAM, a Leadtek GeForce4 Ti4400, and a Mitsumi CD-ROM.

I booted with the XP cd and setup started. After it copied the temporary files from the CD, I got a message saying "Starting up Windows" and it just hangs there...I had moved the hard drive from master to slave, and from the primary to secondary IDE port and get the same result...I have removed all but one RAM chip, removed the sound card, ethernet card, everything but the video card, hard drive, and CD-ROM. I had also installed an old GeForce2 32MB card instead of the GeForce4. I have also flashed the BIOS to the latest version on the Asus site, ver. 1.009, and get the same result no matter what.

I then put the hard drive in my roommate's computer and was able to get XP completely installed on that hard drive with no problems. I then put that hard drive in my PC, as the master drive, and set up BIOS so that it will boot from there first....I then get an error during boot-up saying something like "Disk read error, press ctrl+alt+delete to reboot"...I can understand that, the HAL is all messed up, but it was installed on my roommate's PC with no problems, meaning that the hard drive is fine.

I had also installed Win2k Pro on that same hard drive in my PC with the same hardware configuration as above, and had no problems. Then, while in Windows 2k, I inserted the Windows XP cd and started installing it. After the files were copied from the CD, XP rebooted my system. During reboot, the black Windows XP screen came up saying it was loading, and it just froze. I tried to reboot several times and it did the same thing each time. Then, I booted from the Windows XP cd and started to install it again. Once the files were copied from the CD, a message at the bottom of the screen said something like "Starting Microsoft Windows" and it just hangs there...

I had also used the official XP boot disks available from Microsoft. After all of the drivers are copied, I get the "Starting Microsoft Windows" message.

Last but not least, I copied all of the files from the i386 directory to my hard drive, booted with a Win98 floppy into DOS, and ran Setup from there....same result as above...

I feel like I have tried everything possible in getting XP installed. Can anyone think of anything else I can try? Ive been at this for days now with no luck...Thankfully I still have Win2k installed on another hard drive so I can still use my computer....

Any ideas? Thanks for any assistance!

 

[UniSol]

Have you overclocled too much?

 

[Deversol]

Nope, Ive never overclocked...

 

[Deversol]

Can anyone help me out here?

 

[Tcs]

XP Problems

I have experienced problems before with some Nvidia based video cards on some motherboards installing windows XP. The results are one of two things, it will freeze on the blue and white text screen saying starting windows, or it will give a stop code of either 07 or 50 (if I remember right).

The error is caused by the video card on that motherboard in my experience.

A couple of things you can try is to disable all memory related "tweaks" or add ons in the bios. Especially Shadow RAM if enabled. Turn AGP back to 1x if you can. Basically make all memory and video related activity basic as possible.

In some cases this will solve the problem, and sometimes it will make a system that locks at the "Starting Windows" screen to actually display a stop code.

If this does not work put in a non-nvidia based video card and try the install. In my experience this will finally solve the problem. If it does not maybe it will at least give you a stop code that you can look up on microsoft's website.

Hope this helps..

By the way, if this works after it is installed you can restore the bios settings and reinstall the video card and everything will be fine.

 

[RobbieSan]

I've run into this problem before. I tried to install XP with a Geforce2 MX 64MB and it would hang. I installed my older TNT2 Ultra and XP was fine. After the install I simply swapped out the cards. My recommendation is to try and borrow a card from someone and when XP is installed swap out the cards.

 

[GoNz0]

Faulty DMA channel. go to cnet and have a look for a motherbaord and ram test proggy, see if you can find any board faults.

 

[Deversol]

Thanks for the responses guys. Last night I installed a SiS PCI video card...some old piece of junk...and I got the same result as with my GeForce2 GTS and my GeForce4 Ti4400 cards.

Tcs, Ill make those changes in the BIOS this evening and see if it will solve my problem.

GoNz0, I'll look for that program and test out my board this evening as well.

Thanks again guys, I'll post my results this evening.

 

[dave holbon]

Go here to make sure that you have set this up board correctly.

http://www.amdmb.com/article-display.php?ArticleID=59

If you have the RAID chipset (which only supports stripping) make sure this feature is turned off.

Check the IDE cable, is it forty core or eighty core?

What DMA transfer rate is your drive set at internally?

I suspect it's a data transfer problem between your drive, chipset and XP.

 

[Waldmark]

It looks like we're in the same boat. Tried to install Windows XP Pro on a7v133 with GeForce 256 (Equivalent to a GeForce 1), BIOS Revision 3, and the dreaded Soundblaster Live. Using a Thunderbird 800; no overclocking.

First, there are two occasions when the installer needs a couple of files from the installation CD, but the CD player is inaccessible. To get around this, I had to copy the i386 directory to a second hard drive.

On booting, I get the Windows XP loading screen, and then darkness.

However, I can boot into safe mode, although it takes about 3 minutes, probably because of the Soundblaster. I installed the latest NVidia Detonator and rebooted to normal mode but got the same black screen.

 

[Waldmark]

Originally posted by Deversol
I have spent several days trying to get XP installed on my system, to no avail.

I have an Asus A7v133 mobo with a 1.3GHz Athlon, and am installing XP on a WD SE 80gb hard drive formatted in NTFS. I also have 768MB of Crucial PC133 CL2 SDRAM, a Leadtek GeForce4 Ti4400, and a Mitsumi CD-ROM.

I booted with the XP cd and setup started. After it copied the temporary files from the CD, I got a message saying "Starting up Windows" and it just hangs there...I had moved the hard drive from master to slave, and from the primary to secondary IDE port and get the same result...I have removed all but one RAM chip, removed the sound card, ethernet card, everything but the video card, hard drive, and CD-ROM. I had also installed an old GeForce2 32MB card instead of the GeForce4. I have also flashed the BIOS to the latest version on the Asus site, ver. 1.009, and get the same result no matter what.

I then put the hard drive in my roommate's computer and was able to get XP completely installed on that hard drive with no problems. I then put that hard drive in my PC, as the master drive, and set up BIOS so that it will boot from there first....I then get an error during boot-up saying something like "Disk read error, press ctrl+alt+delete to reboot"...I can understand that, the HAL is all messed up, but it was installed on my roommate's PC with no problems, meaning that the hard drive is fine.

I had also installed Win2k Pro on that same hard drive in my PC with the same hardware configuration as above, and had no problems. Then, while in Windows 2k, I inserted the Windows XP cd and started installing it. After the files were copied from the CD, XP rebooted my system. During reboot, the black Windows XP screen came up saying it was loading, and it just froze. I tried to reboot several times and it did the same thing each time. Then, I booted from the Windows XP cd and started to install it again. Once the files were copied from the CD, a message at the bottom of the screen said something like "Starting Microsoft Windows" and it just hangs there...

I had also used the official XP boot disks available from Microsoft. After all of the drivers are copied, I get the "Starting Microsoft Windows" message.

Last but not least, I copied all of the files from the i386 directory to my hard drive, booted with a Win98 floppy into DOS, and ran Setup from there....same result as above...

I feel like I have tried everything possible in getting XP installed. Can anyone think of anything else I can try? Ive been at this for days now with no luck...Thankfully I still have Win2k installed on another hard drive so I can still use my computer....

Any ideas? Thanks for any assistance!

I had the very same problem. Flashing the BIOS to version 1009 (available from the Asus website) completely solved the problem.